In 1944 on the grounds of dubious allegations of widespread collaboration with the advancing German forces, the Chechen nation as a collective were deported to Central Asia.

By late 1994, the First Chechen War broke out, and after two years of fighting, the Russian government negotiated a ceasefire in August 1996.

The Russian military established control over Chechnya in late April 2000, ending the major combat phase of the war, with insurgency and hostilities continuing for several years.

[8][9][10] The North Caucasus, a mountainous region that includes Chechnya, spans or lies close to important trade and communication routes between Russia and the Middle East, control of which have been fought over by various powers for millennia.

[11] Russia's entry into the region followed Tsar Ivan the Terrible's conquest of the Golden Horde's Khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan in 1556, initiating a long struggle for control of the North Caucasus routes with other contemporary powers including Persia, the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Khanate.

[12] During the 16th century, the Russian Tsardom tried to win influence in the North Caucasus by allying themselves with local princes such as the Temryuk of Kabardia and Shikh-Murza Okotsky of Chechnya.

Prince Shikh Okotsky had in his army around 500 Cossacks combined with 1,000 Okocheni (the Chechens of Aukh), and often waged anti-Iranian and anti-Ottoman campaigns in Dagestan.

[15][16] Sultan-Mut continued to pursue an anti-Russian policy into the early 17th century and was known to sometimes live among the Chechens and with them raid the Russian Cossacks.

A few years later, in 1783, Russia signed the Treaty of Georgievsk with Heraclius II of the Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti, making the eastern Georgian kingdom—a Christian enclave surrounded by hostile Muslim states—a Russian protectorate.

This conflict was primarily driven by the actions of corrupt governors, local princes, and the imposition of discriminatory policies and taxes on the North Caucasian population.

Ultimately, Murat Kuchukov was captured and subsequently executed, marking a decisive defeat for the North Caucasian insurgents.

Failing to do so, it burned his unoccupied home village instead, but the force was ambushed by Mansur's followers on its return journey and annihilated, beginning the first Chechen–Russian war.

From there on began the decline of the insurgency, although Mansur continued mobilizing fighters, but in June 1787, he only managed to gather 1,000 men, who also soon left him after showing indecisivness in his campaigns.

However, there he also suffered several heavy defeats, most notably during the battle of the Urup River, where he was almost hit by an arrow and barely managed to escape through the mountains.

[25][26] After Russia's defeat of French Napoleonic forces in the 1812 war, Tsar Alexander I turned his attentions once more to the North Caucasus, assigning one of his most celebrated generals, Aleksey Petrovich Yermolov, to the conquest of the region.

Joseph Stalin personally held negotiations with the Caucasian leaders in 1921 and promised a wide autonomy inside the Soviet state.

Soviet historiography falsely accuses Chechens of joining the Wehrmacht en masse, although this notion is not accepted in any other academic instances.

In February 1944, under the direct command of Lavrentiy Beria, almost half a million Chechens and Ingush were removed from their homes and forcibly settled in Central Asia in an act of ethnic cleansing.

The incident quickly deteriorated into mass ethnic riots, as Slavic mobs attacked Chechens and Ingushes and looted their property throughout the region for four days.

[46] By the late 1960s, the region calmed down and the Chechen–Russian conflict came to its lowest point until the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the eruption of Chechen Wars in 1990.

[54] By early 2000 Russia almost completely destroyed the city of Grozny and succeeded in putting Chechnya under direct control of Moscow by late April.

Though the oil-rich region has maintained relative stability under Kadyrov, he has been accused by critics and citizens of suppressing freedom of the press and violating other political and human rights.

But when you use, basically, pirates and rogues as death squads and you entrust local power to them as the occupational authority, the result is that you destroy whatever is left of regular governance structures.

[74] The exact number of Chechen casualties of this conflict are difficult to ascertain due to lack of records and the long time period of the clashes.

[75] High estimates of these two wars range of up to 150,000 or 160,000 killed, as put by Taus Djabrailov, the head of Chechnya's interim Parliament.